This article examines the sources for reconstructing Jesuit finances in China. While there are a multitude of anecdotal references in Jesuit letters and reports, only four in-depth accounting documents have survived. One of those four documents is “Les Biens de la Maison Française de Pékin en 1776–1778.” After 1773, both ecclesiastical and state agents took an interest in the Jesuit possessions. While multiple rulers had provided the funding to start up these missions, the fact that their keepers were no longer able to secure these substantial possessions explains why the account books and further documentation were painstakingly tracked down. When compared to other accounting sources, “Les Biens de la Maison Française” indicates that the local investments and revenue from these properties were the most important sources of income by the end of the eighteenth century. In combination with references to these properties in Jesuit letters, this particular set of accounting sources illustrates a central trend in Jesuit finances in the China missions: They became an increasingly regional and local affair after the Jesuits failed to secure sustainable global funding, transported from Europe to Asia along ever-changing, yet continuously insecure, networks.

How society views the welfare deservingness of migrants significantly impacts their welfare rights. However, little attention has been paid to the welfare deservingness of domestic migrants in developing countries. Drawing on the theory of deservingness criteria, this study constructs an analytical framework for the welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants in China based on five key factors: hukou status, length of urban residence, employment status, migration patterns, and homeownership. This study constructed thirty-two vignettes based on the above five factors, collected a set of experimental data through an online survey and used multilevel modelling to analyse factors affecting the perceived welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants. The results show that hukou status is the most significant factor affecting the perceived welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants. In addition, there are significant differences between locals and non-locals in the views on welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants in terms of identity, need and attitude, but not in reciprocity and control. Moreover, the five deservingness criteria have no significant differences in their impact on the different dimensions of welfare deservingness. This study contributes to the understanding of the social underpinnings of the welfare system in China.

What kind of Arctic actor will China be in 2050? China has entered the Arctic, and its future ambitions in the region are closely tied to its future trajectory in global politics. We conduct a scenario analysis of China’s ability to realise its Arctic ambitions in three scenarios: A continuation of the status quo (Ascendant China), Chinese economic stagnation (Stagnant China), and Chinese global hegemony (Triumphant China). We find that climate change will affect China differently in these scenarios. In Triumphant China, climate change can act as an enabler of Chinese ambitions, particularly regarding fishing and maritime transport. Even as a non-Arctic state, a Triumphant China will likely wield sufficient global power to realise its Arctic ambitions. In Ascendant China and Stagnant China, we find that climate change primarily acts as an obstacle to China’s Arctic ambitions. China would rely on its Russian partnership to a greater extent, limiting their ability to realise their ambitions. Without a strong Arctic foothold, climate change could cause regional changes too rapid and comprehensive for China to be able to adapt civilian and military capabilities to those changes. Finally, climate change may make Stagnant China more likely, as sea-level rise threatens China’s economic might.

The idea of China cannot be restricted to that of mainland China, as Euro-American and Chinese scholars perceive it. In Thailand, China studies were originally formulated by American scholars during the Cold War. However, this framework has failed to capture the complex and evolving dynamics between the United States, Thailand, and China. This article explores how Sino-Thai scholars have attempted to develop a new understanding of “Sinologism” as a decolonial response to the American-style approach to China studies. This paper employs qualitative methods from the humanities to analyse the evolving idea of China through the lens of Sino-Thai Sinologism, which differs significantly from its American-style counterpart. Situated within an emerging direction in Area Studies, this form of scholarship embodies academic diplomacy or “foreign affairs from below” – one shaped by both Westerners and Asians.

A recent national survey conducted by the China National Textile and Apparel Council provides the first systematic assessment of how Chinese supply chain enterprises—predominantly small- and medium-sized manufacturers in the textiles and apparel industry—are perceiving and responding to the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and related mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. This piece analyses the survey’s key findings and discusses what they reveal about the practical reach and limits of extraterritorial due diligence governance in global manufacturing supply chains.

‘Constantly commending Hellas’ is a metaphorical expression coined by Mao Zedong to label Soviet-backed party rivals as ‘philhellenic’ during the 1941 party purge, reinforcing his leadership under the guise of the Sinification of Marxism. Following the communist conquest of China in 1949, the metaphor remained central to debates over ‘Westernization versus Sinification’. It highlights tensions between philhellenism and mishellenism and provides a valuable lens to explore the intersection of classical reception and modern Chinese thought. This article traces ‘Hellenomania’ in China from the mid-19th-century colonial period to the post-Mao era and addresses issues of nationalism, ideological interpretation and intellectual autonomy. It argues that ‘Hellenomania’, which served as a historical resource for China’s transition from a dynastic empire to a nation-state, has its roots in the intellectual tendency to view Euro-American modernity as descended from classical antiquity. Through five case studies of phil- or mishellenists, including Liang Qichao (1873–1929), Mao Zedong (1893–1976), Xiao Jun (1907–1988), Gu Zhun (1915–1974) and Lin Zhichun (1910–2007), the article explores their roles within the frameworks of classical reception and intellectual history.

The post-1919 international order extended to China formal sovereign equality while offering few legal means to exercise it. The Sino-Belgian treaty dispute of 1926–29 reveals this: when China abrogated its 1865 treaty with Belgium and Brussels sued at the Permanent Court of International Justice, the institutions that promised peaceful revision could not deliver it without the consent of the powers whose privileges were at stake. The ‘unequal treaties’, a political category coined only in 1923, named the contradiction the order had built in. Four lawyer-diplomats—Wellington Koo, Wang Chung-hui, C.T. Wang, and Eugene Chen—were each caught between national autonomy and admission among the ‘civilised’ powers. The turn from legal argument to ‘revolutionary diplomacy’ was the structure’s doing, not a failure of nerve. Read beside Turkey, Persia, and the Latin American states, China’s case locates the obstacle: not semi-peripheral weakness as such, but the institutional position from which each engaged an order that subordinated its members through the very terms of their admission.

Improving household disaster preparedness is one of the most effective ways to reduce disaster risk. Based on a survey of 327 farmers in the areas worst hit by the Wenchuan and Ya’an earthquakes, this study systematically analyzed the impact of social capital on disaster preparedness, and the specific mechanism of action between the two was further analyzed using the intermediary effect model. The results show that (1) faced with the threat of earthquake disasters, farmers are not sufficiently prepared to avoid disasters, with only about 25% having made preparations. Farmers’ social capital ability is weak, and the scores of farmers’ perception of possibility and severity are 47.44 and 67.19, respectively. (2) Farmers’ social capital is positively correlated with their disaster preparedness. With other conditions remaining unchanged, the possibility of farmers’ disaster preparedness increases by 3.519, 1.050, and 0.766 units for each additional unit of social network, social support, and social participation, respectively. (3) Possibility perception has a partial mediating effect between social capital and disaster avoidance preparedness. Specifically, social participation indirectly affects farmers’ disaster preparedness through the possibility perception. Policymakers should consider enhancing farmers’ disaster preparedness through social participation.

Does the nationwide ‘White Paper Movement’ protesting against zero-COVID measures by the central government signal a threat to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule? This article explores protest dynamics under the Xi Jinping administration, examining patterns of grievances directed at different government levels. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset spanning 2012–2022, we analyse protest characteristics and contextual factors to identify the determinants of protest targeting. Our findings reveal that protests articulating ideological demands, occurring in urban hubs, and involving sizable crowds, particularly in Beijing, are more inclined to target the central government. These insights gain significance when contrasted with protests aimed at local institutions. This study advances our comprehension of protest patterns within a resilient authoritarian framework, offering insights into social stability and regime durability post-White Paper Movement.

Theories of democratic diffusion predict that exposure to liberal democracies fosters support for political liberalism, while recent studies on Chinese overseas students suggest studying abroad generates backlash against liberal values. Using a unique four-year longitudinal dataset of nearly 1,000 Chinese college students in China and the United States, we examine how studying abroad shapes students’ ideology, attitudes, and identity. Our findings challenge both perspectives. Students who study in the United States are already more politically liberal, market-oriented, and cosmopolitan, and less nationalistic than their peers upon departure, underscoring the importance of selection. Ideological preferences remain remarkably stable throughout college, regardless of location. However, support for China’s political system and affective identification with Chinese national identity declines among students in both countries from 2022 to 2023, with a greater decline among students in the United States. These results show that selection, home-country shocks, and host-country context jointly shape overseas students’ political attitudes.

China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI), launched in 2022, has rapidly turned into a flagship programme through which Beijing seeks to present itself as an international security actor and foster strategic alignment both within and beyond its immediate neighbourhood. While emerging scholarship mostly discusses China’s intentions behind the GSI, this article places emphasis on analysing how the initiative has been received. In particular, we seek to investigate why a large number of states from the global south have endorsed the GSI by not only lending rhetorical support to the initiative but also increasingly moving to implement specific security-related cooperation projects with China. We take a role-theoretical approach and make the argument that growing role alignment between China and its GSI partners best explains this development. That is, China’s emerging role conception as an international security provider – particularly in non-military domains such as law enforcement, police training, and IT surveillance – resonates with the expectations and needs of many global south states as security seekers, which tend to share similar understandings of security with China and often prioritise internal and regime security. To validate our argument empirically, we provide empirical examples from continental Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and (East) Africa.

This article examines how litigation reshapes civil rights mobilization under authoritarianism through a study of married-out women’s struggles for land rights in rural China over more than three decades. Drawing on in-depth empirical observations, it develops the concept of cooptation justice to explain how litigation shifted from a pressure-building tactic within a broader repertoire of contention to a mechanism of institutional closure. In the earlier period, litigation operated alongside petitioning, protest, media exposure, and support from lawyers and civic actors to generate leverage over local authorities. In the later period, however, shrinking political opportunities and the promotion of formally accessible but politically bounded legal opportunities redirected grievances into courts. Under these conditions, judicial proceedings did not simply fail to remedy discrimination. They absorbed contentious claims into authoritative processes that validated exclusion, weakened alternative avenues of mobilization, and increased the costs of continued contention. The article argues that cooptation justice is a mode of authoritarian governance in which law functions not only as an instrument of legitimacy and dispute management but also as a mechanism for containing civil rights mobilization.